The secret is…there is no secret.

Early morning wake-up call today. I was driving my mother to the airport for a flight back to the east coast – she’s been in town for a few weeks. On the drive back, I ran into rush-hour traffic. That meant a little more radio (ESPN 710 AM – Seahawks Super Bowl edition live from Times Square!) and also a few more radio advertisements, including one for a “secret” weight-loss formula. You know the type: “Act now! Supplies are very limited! This astonishing elixir/formula/powder/milkshake/candy bar/packaged item is the answer to all of your weight-loss prayers!”

There is no shortcut to good health. There is no secret formula. There is no killer superfood. (But some foods are vastly better than others for us. Pop quiz: pound for pound, what’s the highest-fiber fruit out there? Ready? Raspberries. You heard it here first. Eight grams per cup. Plus a whole lot of other important vitamins and such things. Nature knew what it was doing with those little guys. Chow down.)

So what does that have to do with Every48? Simple. I’m tired today. Really. I woke up early, I have a ton of work to do today, and I’d love to just…gasp…skip a day of exercise even though I took a rest day yesterday and frankly, barely moved out of my office chair all day. Not ideal. I would love to believe that I can phone it in, that somehow there’s a cheaper, faster, less inconvenient way to look good and feel good and live to be 100 or whatever ripe old age we’ll be able to get to a half-century from now if we start taking care of ourselves now. But in my heart, I already know the answer.

There is no secret.

There is no shortcut. There is no cheap, fast, easy way to do this. There’s just doing it.

Today, that means my day will look something like this: a morning of writing my current project. A healthy lunch. An hour or two more of work. A a 45-minute bike ride at the gym. Shower. Back to work for my late afternoon conference calls.

It’s on the schedule. It will get done.

Actually, come to think of it, there is a secret.

The secret is to just do it. Commit to a vision, stay in the moment, don’t let the noise in our heads get us off topic, stay focused, and move. It’s just another day. Just another day to contribute to the world, spend time with the people we love, and pay our dues for our time on the planet. For all of 2014, I commit to an hour (or a bit more or less) of intense exercise for every 48 hours I take up space in my little corner of the world.

It is January 28, 2014. Twenty-eight days into a 365-day experiment. Onward.